The Official Nintendo Player's Guide

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US Paperback.

The Official Nintendo Player's Guide is a video game strategy guide created for Nintendo and published by Tokuma Shoten in 1987. The book's concept was made by Work House, the publisher wasa Tatsumi Yamashita and the producer was Tsutomu Otsuka. The chief editor is Yukio Yamashita, and senior editor is Ichiro Koike, with the American staff including Howard Phillips as chief editor and Pam Sather as the senior editor. The book contains a description of every game that was available for the Nintendo Entertainment System at the time of writing, as well as in-depth reviews including maps, strategies, and cheats for 24 select games. The Official Nintendo Player's Guide predates the first Nintendo Power issue by several months and was written whit the Nintendo Fun Club was still in production. Later, in 1991, Nintendo began a series of hint books with a similar style called the Nintendo Player's Guide. A later Basic Set bundle of the NES included a copy of The Official Nintendo Player's Guide instead of a game.

The in-depth reviews include the following games:

My brother acquired this book at the end of the 1980s, and it became a sacred relic to me. I used it extensively to help me beat those games I owned which were in the book, and I carefully studied all the games I didn't yet possess to determine which ones I should get in the future.

Status

I still own our very badly worn copy and have read it cover to cover several times.

Review

Good

  • The book has a nice easy-to-follow layout.
  • In the bigger reviews, about the first half of the game was covered in great detail (and in some cases the entire game). For each of them, it's more than enough to get a player well-into the game.
  • The maps are particularly useful.
  • In some cases, the reviews are more helpful at describing the game than the original game's manual.
  • The book came with a page of Nintendo-themed stickers as well.

Bad

  • For a book meant primarily for kids, the binding isn't very rugged. The cover fell off our copy pretty early into its use, and slowly pages began to fall out as well.
  • A lot of the maps are hand drawn rather than screenshots. Granted, they're very well drawn and match the game very well, but line art filled with water colors is not the same as actual screens.

Ugly

  • Nothing.

Gallery

Individual Page Scans

Links